Reply 120 of 124, by marxveix
My driver supports ATi 3D RageII/RageII+DVD/Rage2C/Rage3, cards from 1996 - 2000. It does not support short lived ATi 3D Rage, card that started 3D Rage series and ATI3DCIF - ATI 3D C InterFace.
Some info about ATi 3D Rage card (ATI Mach64 GT) April 1st 1996
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/ati-mach64-gt.g184
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/3d-rage.c3166
ATi 3D Rage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXKMxNg-_0Y
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ATI TECHNOLOGIES ANNOUNCES 3D RAGE - VALUE-PRICED CHIP TO ENABLE
ARCADE-EQUIVALENT GAMING ON MULTIMEDIA HOME PCs
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NOVEMBER 13, 1995 - Las Vegas, Nev. - ATI Technologies Inc. (TSE:ATY) today
announced 3D RAGE, the first 3D chip that meets the price/performance
milestones set by manufacturers of the next generation of Multimedia Home
PCs and provides a comprehensive 3D arcade-caliber tool kit for games
developers to create visually stunning games on the PC.
Value-priced, and featuring dizzying arcade-caliber gaming on the PC, 3D
RAGE is the most integrated high performance multimedia accelerator in its
class. 3D RAGE marries rich 3D features with all of the capabilities of its
award winning mach64 2D accelerators, adds full-screen, full-motion 30
frames per second (fps) MPEG video playback and enhanced support for all
major consumer video applications to produce the most intense gaming
experience available on a PC. The new chip also utilizes the latest SGRAM
memory providing four times the performance of current DRAM products at
DRAM comparable pricing. Next generation synchronous memories keep
bandwidth-hungry video and 3D engines found in advanced multimedia
accelerators running smoothly.
"With 3D RAGE, ATI completes the PC gaming puzzle," said Henry Quan, ATI's
vice president of marketing. "Capitalizing on proven technologies and
stable, open platforms, we have brought together the best of 3D, 2D and
video, all in one product, which will not only produce the most powerful
experience for the hard core gamer but will provide the ultimate, maximized
tool for games developers."
"After years of anticipation, everything will finally be in place over the
next 12 months to foster a leap forward for the PC viewing experience,"
said Mike Feibus, Analyst with Mercury Research. "This is due primarily to
the confluence of three factors. First and foremost is Windows 95, with
open and available APIs. Second is the emergence of accelerators like ATI's
3D RAGE that provide support for 3D and video as well as two-dimensional
graphics. And third, the developing hardware-software platform is spurring
games developers to make use of the technology. It will be an exciting
year."
"Companies like Microsoft and ATI are leading the industry to transform the
PC into the ultimate gaming platform," said Kate Seekings, Microsoft's 3D
Evangelist. "With the introduction of 3D RAGE, ATI has once again shown
that they understand the needs of games developers and systems
manufacturers and have built in all the features and performance these two
parties need to capitalize on this huge business opportunity."
Built for Current and Future Needs
Priced at $48 (in quantities of l0,000), with samples available now and
full production to begin in first quarter 1996, 3D RAGE is the first chip
of its kind which will enable systems manufacturers to provide completely
integrated, high performance 2D/3D/video for arcade-caliber gaming in an
easily upgradeable multimedia system which could sell for less than $2,000.
The second in its accelerator family to incorporate ATI's recently
announced Enhanced Visual Architecture (EVA), 3D RAGE allows OEMs to design
a single low-cost multimedia motherboard which incorporates the critical
features the new multimedia consumer is demanding such as TV-tuner,
hardware MPEG and video conferencing.
The PC - An Inherently Superior Gaming Machine
With industry experts predicting sales volumes of "next generation"
multimedia PCs at over 10 million units in l996, the revenue potential for
PC games is far greater than that of "next generation" games consoles. As
well as providing the virtual reality experience of 3D, the PC as a gaming
platform supports TV-quality video, interactivity for tele-gaming and
LAN-based multi-player gaming, making it an inherently superior gaming
environment, virtually unmatchable in the console market. Games developers
need a predictable, stable, high performance platform to ensure that PC
games can be created that will be a significant improvement over the
console experience. ATI's 3D RAGE has been built to meet these criteria and
with an installed base of over l0 million accelerators, ATI is a proven
volume supplier of multimedia hardware and can deliver the customers for
games publishers to support the development of 3D games on the PC.
Rather than catering to a proprietary, closed environment like some other
multimedia accelerator vendors, ATI's 3D RAGE leverages off the strong
industry standards being developed by companies like Microsoft. It supports
all major Application Programming Interfaces (API) including Microsoft's
Windows 95 Direct3D and Reality Lab, Apple's TinselTown and QuickDraw 3D,
Argonaut's BRender and Criterion's RenderWare. Coupled with the latest
gaming add-ons such as joysticks, 3D input devices, Virtual Reality
headsets and Digital Simultaneous Voice Data (DSVD) modems used for
tele-gaming, 3D RAGE will enable totally new gaming categories.
The Ideal Development Tool
"While other graphics and video vendors continue to launch 'trade-off
technology', ATI's 3D RAGE supports all major APIs, accelerates all six
Direct 3D texturing modes and incorporates all the features a games
developer needs to optimize the gaming experience," said Craig Fryar from
the OEM division of game publisher Interplay Productions. "Put this amazing
product together with ATI's reputation for shipping quality multimedia
hardware in volume and games developers have a winner."
With performance rates of over 20 million perspectively correct texture
mapped pixels per second and 575K+ Gouraud shaded triangles per second, 3D
RAGE has the best single chip performance currently available in this
category. To achieve comparable functionality and performance, other
vendors require the use of multiple chips like triangle set-up engines and
DACs, which adds to total system costs. Also, many chip manufacturers
provide limited features forcing the game developer to compromise image
quality in favor of speed, or vice versa. ATI allows the games developers'
creativity to reign supreme by allowing them to decide how they want to use
3D RAGE features to create the ultimate experience depending on the class
of game they are developing.
By utilizing PCI bus mastering, 3D RAGE further increases system
performance. For example, texture maps can be swapped at high speeds
between system and graphics memory which offloads the CPU to perform tasks
such as calculating triangle vertices, resulting in significantly higher
frame rates, which provides a dramatically enhanced gaming experience.
3D Rage supports perspectively-corrected bi- and tri-linear filtered
texture mapping for the highest level of virtual reality immersion. In
addition, support for all six Direct 3D modes in conjunction with sub-pixel
accuracy creates an amazing gaming experience. It also supports 3D Gouraud
shaded polygons to accelerate the rendering of solid color surfaces. Hidden
surface removal using Z-buffering is also available so the developer can
decide whether to use graphics memory to offload the CPU from having to
perform the taxing Z-sort algorithm when building 3D images.
Ardent gamers are truly addicted to eye-popping 3D which games developers
achieve using special effects, such as alpha blending, fog and texture
lighting, which have all been incorporated into 3D RAGE. With the video
texturing feature of 3D RAGE, developers can render live video images
direct from an MPEG source onto 3D surfaces for state-of-the-art visual
effects.
The Ultimate Video Accelerator
3D RAGE provides the highest possible video functionality including support
for all major consumer video applications. MPEG playback functionality
provides broadcast-quality, full screen, full motion, true color video. To
transform your PC into an intelligent TV that harnesses all of the
entertainment capabilities of a TV with the processing power of a PC, a
TV-tuner capability can be added on so users can channel surf, do instant
replays, capture their own TV transcripts and more. An optional hardware
MPEG upgrade will provide the highest quality video images at full screen,
30 fps speeds guaranteed, completely removing the task of processing video
from the CPU. Enabling all of this multimedia expansion is ATI's EVA
architecture with its built-in ATI Media Connector (AMC) which allows for
the efficient transport of video and audio between multimedia devices and
cards.
ATI is the first to include both front-end and back-end video hardware
scaling to handle two or more video streams simultaneously, a key
requirement for the burgeoning modem-based video conferencing market. PCI
bus mastering offloads the CPU from bi-directional transfer of video
between the system memory and the accelerator.
3D RAGE - The Ideal OEM Product
ATI clearly has an advantage over the several new entrants who have
appeared in the 3D acceleration market. OEMs are building Home PCs for
users who are not only demanding great 3D, 2D and video acceleration, but
who also want proven feature rich drivers and utilities. In addition, OEM
system manufacturers are selling into a multiple niche market where
TV-tuners, hardware MPEG and videoconferencing are in high demand. 3D RAGE
provides all of this functionality plus ensures pin compatibility with
current and future mach64 multimedia accelerators and options provides
local language support to lessen the cost for the OEM to sell the product
in international markets.
Other Features
- PCI 2.1 Plug and Play with bus mastering
- Bi-endian support for broad processor compatibility including PCI
PowerMacs
- Integrated 135mhz DAC support 1280x1024 resolution
- Supports 1, 2, 4MB FP/EDO DRAM, SDRAM and SGRAM
- Unique color calibration support in hardware
- DDC1 and DDC2 Plug and Play monitor support
- Power-on diagnostics and active and passive power management
Corporate Profile
ATI Technologies designs and manufactures products for the Intel-compatible
personal computer and Apple PCI Power Macintosh markets. These products
include graphics accelerators and components, communications products and
video hardware and software. Founded in l985, the firm's revenues for
fiscal 1995 were over $359 million. ATI employs 650 people worldwide and
has a product line that is sold through an international network of
computer manufacturers and leading computer distributors. ATI is a publicly
traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE:ATY).
# # #
Copyright ATI Technologies Inc., 1995. 3D RAGE, EVA, AMC and mach64 are
trademarks of ATI Technologies Inc. All other company and/or product names
are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective
manufacturers. Features and specifications are subject to change without
notice.
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ATi Rage 3D (short history)
In the mid-1990s, the development of graphics technology reached a new peak. Traditional 2D display technology has long been unable to meet the demand, especially in the game field. The embryonic form of 3D has emerged. Many graphics manufacturers have launched the first generation of 3D graphics cards, such as NVIDIA's NV1, Matrox's Mlennium and Mystique, PowerVR's PCX1, S3's Virge3D and so on. ATI also launched the first-generation 3D graphics chip 3D Rage to enter the 3D battlefield.
3D Rage is ATI's fifth-generation graphics chip. The 2D core inherits from Mach64 and adds 3D processing functions. It has a rendering pipeline and a TMU; the process is 0.5 microns, equipped with 2MB DRAM memory, and supports MPGE-1 hardware acceleration , Is ATI's fifth-generation graphics chip. However, although it provides 3D acceleration features such as light source processing, it does not support hardware Z-buffer, so it is not a true 3D chip.
3D Xpression (ATi 3D Rage - Mach64 GT).
3D Rage announced date is 13th of November 1995, Release Date is March 31, 1996. The actual release date may be a bit later, after all, its product advertisement was only launched in August 1996. The graphics card that uses the 3D Rage chip is 3D Xpression, which is particularly common because it directly uses the PCB board of Video Xpression. As a result, there is no picture of the graphics card in the ATI advertisement, only the words "RAGE 3D" are highlighted. Entering the 3D era, ATI is still OEM and selling chips.
3D Rage quickly faded out of the market due to compatibility issues. Six months later, on September 5, 1996, ATI released a new and improved 3D Rage II. 3D Rage II is the first 3D chip in the true sense. 3D RAGE II has corrected the compatibility problem of 3D RAGE. The 2D aspect uses the redesigned MACH 64 GUI engine, and the 2D performance is increased by 20%. 3D Rage II supports bilinear, trilinear filtering, Z-buffer and some Direct3D material blending modes, but the pixel filtering is only slightly better than S3's ViRGE, which can only be regarded as quite satisfactory compared to other products at the time. The video memory is matched with a single-cycle EDO of 2 to 4 MB or a high-speed SGRAM. The 3D RAGE II chip is compatible with 3D RAGE. In addition, MPEG-2 (DVD) playback function has been added. ATI also equips RAGE II with ImpacTV, TV encoding chip. Rage II series chips include Rage II, Rage II+DVD, and Rage LT, later Rage2C.
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Many have used or heard about AMC or AMC 2.0 connetor for early Mach64 and Rage1 / Rage2 / Rage3.
AMC (ATI Multimedia Channel): This is the name you will see for the 40-pin header located on the video card itself. If you bought a standalone card like an ATI Rage Pro, the physical slot on that card was called the AMC. You would use it to plug in "daughterboards" like hardware DVD decoders or TV tuners.
What about ATi EVA, what is EVA?
EVA (Enhanced Visual Architecture): This is the term motherboard manufacturers (like Intel or Dell) used in the late 1990s. If a motherboard had ATI graphics chips built directly into the board, they called the expansion header the EVA bus or EVA slot. It allowed the computer manufacturer to add video input/output modules directly to the system.They use the same protocol and the same 40-pin connection, but AMC is the device-side name (video card) and EVA is the system-side name (motherboard).
Best ATi Rage3 drivers for 3DCIF / Direct3D / OpenGL / DVD : ATi RagePro drivers and software
30+MiniGL / OpenGL Win 9x dll files for all ATi Rage3 cards : Re: ATi RagePro OpenGL files
